


Ad Victorium

by TrippinOverMyFandoms



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Because it's really cute, Drama, F/M, Funny, Kinda, Lots of it, also a lot of angst, this is a lot of shippy stuff between danse and my sole, totally original story title
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:08:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23273725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrippinOverMyFandoms/pseuds/TrippinOverMyFandoms
Summary: Military brat Stella Rosa was a lawyer with a sarcastic attitude and a perfect life before the bombs fell. Nuclear devastation and 200 years later, her life is drastically changed. She's suddenly forced into a life of survival, fighting tooth and nail just for her next breath, turned into a soldier whether she liked it or not. This is her story.
Relationships: Nate/Female Sole Survivor, Nate/Stella, Paladin Danse (Fallout)/Original Female Character(s), Paladin Danse/Female Sole Survivor, Paladin Danse/Stella Rosa
Kudos: 2





	1. Before You Go (part 1)

Stella was nothing short of a military brat, born and raised in Boston to two proud members of the United States military. By the time she was born, her father was a sergeant and her mother was a nurse captain who originally met on base and worked together for years in the service. Her whole life was tied to war and people who chose to fight in it. Their principles were ingrained into her by the time she was four. She could defend herself from a grown man by the age of ten and could shoot a gun at fourteen better than some of the initiates on base. 

So imagine her parents' surprise when their only child decided to become a lawyer. 

Aside from being brought up to be the perfect soldier, Stella had a relatively good childhood. She spent a lot of time with her grandparents whenever her parents were both deployed, so she rarely saw them together for more than a few months at a time. There were times when it was just her and her dad or just her and her mom. When she was old enough that she could be left home alone, it was just her with check-ins from family friends now and then. Despite how rough it may sound to an outsider, Stella enjoyed it when her parents weren’t around.

She loved them, it was just that… well… a young girl who just wanted to live a normal highschool life could get tired of being treated like a soldier. Besides, with parents not around it meant she could have countless sleepovers. It came in handy since her best friend had a tough home life so she often got to stay with Stella.

It was her who spurred Stella to become a lawyer. 

Stella had witnessed the divorce of her friend's parents, originally going to support, but left inspired by the attorney who represented the mother. She was awed by how the situation was handled, especially when her friend’s home life got much better after the case was settled. 

The day she brought up law school to her parents they seemed unsure. She had to argue a point, which she had rehearsed so many times in her room at night, that they had brought her up with the want to help other people. Though their idea of that had been settling war, she had found another way to do it. And that was in a courtroom.

Sure enough, as soon as she had gotten out of high school she was into one of the best law schools in Massachusetts. God had to have been watching over her because she even had a firm looking to hire her before she even graduated. 

One of her very first cases was State vs Nathan Rosa. Nathan was a soldier who was facing a dishonorable discharge for something he supposedly didn’t do, and she was representing him.

Oh, how they hated each other when they first met. 

He was a playboy who hadn’t hesitated to flirt with her the second she walked in the door. Before he joined the service he was the life of any party he decided to grace with his presence. Though being in the military hadn’t changed him much, he still acted like some sort of frat boy. Stella wondered if his demeanor was what got him into trouble in the first place.

She did her best to remain professional but he made it so hard. In the many, many hours they worked so closely together, he flirted with her relentlessly. It was annoying when she was trying to explain to him his chances of success but he insisted on making some sort of inappropriate comment.   
It all changed the night she decided he became too much and accepted his proposal of getting a drink. She figured if she gave in, just a little bit, then he’d become less insufferable and more willing to work on the important stuff. 

Stella didn’t mean to get drunk and sleep with him. 

Though, in her defense, he was much more willing to work with her after that. So much so that he pretty much poured out his life story to her a few nights later. After that, she no longer saw him as an emotionless playboy who only thought with his dick and rather as a man who wanted to help his country. It turned out that the reason he was facing the dishonorable discharge was that someone in his unit had it out for him and decided to pin some horrible things on him. 

As soon as the case was won they became anything but professional, and they couldn’t have been happier.

Of course she had fallen in love with a soldier. 

Her parents absolutely loved him. He was like the son they never had. He fit in perfectly. To top it all off he worked at the same base she grew up on. How they hadn’t met previously, she had no idea. 

In a few short months, they were engaged and moving into a house together. A small place in a cute neighborhood called Sanctuary Hills. They were married in the spring. A perfect life for a sarcastic lawyer and her playboy soldier. She didn’t think it could have gotten any more perfect. 

And then they had a baby. 

They named him Shaun, after Nate’s best friend who died in service about a month before their son was born. She took a break from law and Nathan retired from the military. They had nothing but time in their perfect little life while the world fell apart from a war around them. It was too good. It was too perfect. It was too happy, too dreamy, too beautiful for it all to be her reality. But she lived it, it was hers, what she had done to deserve it she wasn’t sure. But it was all hers.

Stella let her guard down and finally stopped worrying about a year after Shaun was born. She was just getting used to it, then the bombs fell and it was all over.


	2. Before You Go (part 2)

She took the gun and she fired. It was the only choice she had. Kill or be killed. The world she had known was ugly and now she had turned ugly right along with it. No matter how hard she tried or how much she repeated it in her had that she had to kill him she still felt like a monster.

Is this what Nate felt like on his tour? It this what every soldier’s first kill felt like? Would her parents be proud of her now?

It didn’t stop there. On and on she went killing as she traveled to Fenway Park, or Diamon City as it was known now. Somehow she hadn’t forgotten how to shoot and now she was damn grateful that her father had taught her how to hit her mark. Otherwise, she’d be dead five minutes after leaving Sanctuary Hills. 

She let her anger overpower her guilt. Why she felt guilty for killing people who were going to kill her, she didn’t know. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to feel the way she did. So she drowned herself in anger that her husband was killed, that her baby had been taken, that everything she had ever known, that her beautiful life was destroyed. 

Stella went from Bedford to Arlington to Cambridge. It was how she was used to getting to Fenway since moving to Sanctuary Hills. It was there she ran into the police station, gunshots blaring as she approached. They were under attack and it seemed rude of her to just slink by without helping. She was a soldier now, it was her job right?

The terrifying zombie-like creatures were relentless but they went down as easy as any man, and she hated she knew how easily a man went down. 

She learned quickly that the people she had decided to help was this world’s soldiers. The “Brotherhood of Steel” as it had been so proudly introduced as by a tall man in power armor called Paladin Danse. Whether that was his first name or his last she didn’t know… yet.

But he offered her a place among their ranks. Based on her taking down a monster or two? They must have been desperate. So she told him she’d think about it and went on her way to Diamond City. 

There she found Piper and tracked down Nick who were both more than willing to help her find Shaun. It felt good that there were still decent people, not just good soldiers and countless bad guys, that there were just people doing their best. They led her to Kellog who turned out to be a dead end. She didn’t know where to go from there. She returned to Cambridge. 

She helped Danse and decided she might as well become a real soldier. After all, he offered to show her how to be a soldier, take her under his wing and give her a place on the Brotherhood of Steel aircraft known as the Prydwen. She thought it was sweet, and she was hurting, and she needed a home. 

It was a good start to her new upside-down life.


	3. Vertibird Grenades

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the last two chapters were pretty much Stella's life before and after with the two most important men in her life.
> 
> But this one? this one is based on a dumb move I made when trying to fight some ghouls on the road to do some sort of quest. in all fairness, I've only been playing fallout for like four months but I'm already up to like 200 hours (and that's on being homeschooled with nothing better to do). Anyway, I thought it would be funny to turn it into a short little fic which kinda inspired this whole collection. 
> 
> There will be one coming out soon-ish for my first playthrough whenever I get some fics other than ones between Stella and Danse up. RIP. 
> 
> Anyway- enjoy.

“I’m confident that they’ll understand,” Danse says, the heavy metal footsteps of his power armor preceding him so she knew he was approaching before he spoke, “accidents do happen.” He comes to a stop next to where she’s sitting. He’s pretty tall in the armor normally but with her on the ground he seems to tower over her. She’s not even sure if he can see her at all, the chests of those things stood out pretty far. It was one of the reasons she often left her Brotherhood of Steel power armor on the Prydwen. The clunkiness got in the way too often.

“Yeah sure, sure. If the pilot is understanding enough and not angry that I’ve pretty much wasted valuable fuel, Elder Maxson will probably have a few choice words for me the next time I see him.” Stella crossed her arms and glared at the orange smoke that relentlessly floated up into the sky with almost no end in sight. 

It had been an accident, Danse was right. They had been traveling together when they ran into some feral ghouls on the road. She meant to throw a grenade and blow up the bulk of them before they got too close. It was a good idea and one that had worked pretty often. Unfortunately, the first thing she grabbed out of her pack had been one of the Vertibird signal grenades. On top of that, the blast wasn’t even enough to take out the threat. 

Once the ghouls were dead she had tried her hardest to stomp it out, hoping the smoke hadn’t been visible from the Prydwen yet, but it didn’t go out. Not even when she poured water on it. What the hell did they make those things out of? 

So now they waited on the Vertibird to arrive. Danse, probably feeling sorry for her, had offered to explain the incident. If they hadn’t been so close to their destination they could have flown there, but Stella could see the crumbled building just over the hill so flying a few feet would be pretty pointless. 

“I might avoid him the next time we’re on the Prydwen, actually,” She mused, pulling her knees up to her chest, obviously sulking at her mistake. She glances up at Danse to see how he’s taking her controversial comment but he’s watching the skyline for the aircraft. 

“Why would you do that?” he asks her, his brow furrowed but gaze unwavering.

Stella huffs and tries not to throw her hands up in frustration. She was irritated at herself, not him. “Because! Maxson made it pretty clear the grenades aren’t easy to make and I assured him I’d be careful. Clearly, trying to use one to blow up some ferals is not careful.” She now only had seven instead of the original eight. She didn’t travel by Vertibird often but she was sure that she would run out and need the one she wasted. 

She swears she’s hearing things because she could have sworn she heard a small chuckle from above her. “He just says that,” Danse explains and Stella looks back up at him, shocked at both the idea that Maxson would lie and that Danse wasn’t currently defending him. “Well, in total honestly they’re somewhat difficult, but not impossible. He just doesn’t want to hand out more than necessary to everyone. He’s a stickler for having plenty of resources on hand.”

“Makes sense.” 

Just then, the familiar hum of propeller blades catches her attention and she can see the Vertibird’s silhouette approaching. Her gut twists and a new wave of embarrassment washes over her. 

“Looks like they’re here,” Danse notes, standing up a little straighter in his power armor. “Yeah no shit,” she grumbles, ignoring the feeling of his disappointed look burning into her. She didn’t really care that he wasn’t fond of sarcasm at the moment. 

Stella, figuring she might as well show what was left of her dignity, hoists herself up by grabbing onto a piece of metal that stuck out from Danse’s armor, glad he hadn’t moved quite yet. It wasn’t the first time she had done it and there had only been a few times where he had started to walk away as she was blindly reaching for him. 

At least he waited until she was steady on her feet before leaving her to meet with the pilot who had just landed a few feet away from them.

She watches them talk, unable to hear the conversation over the loud engine, doing her very best not to look awkward. At some point, Danse looks over his shoulder at her and she can see the pilot looking at her too. Then they nod at each other and she’s pretty sure what’s left of her dignity instantly die. 

“So?” she asks when Danse has returned to her, leaning to one side to look around him at the Virtibird which seems to be shutting down. Now her curiosity was peaked.

“I explained to the pilot that the signal was unintentional. I also told him how bad you felt about it. So he’s offered to wait here so we can ride back as soon as we’ve cleared out the super mutants.” Relief washes over her, glad that the pilot didn’t fly all the way out there for nothing. She also realizes how great it would be to have a ride back after their mission. 

“Thanks, Danse. Don’t know what I’d do without you.


End file.
